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When a boutique firm’s primary business is the institutional or high net-worth marketplace, some executives would rather manage portfolios than manage the product line of mutual funds.

“We pay for investment research over mutual fund industry research,” said one CEO and portfolio manager of a boutique asset manager with just a handful of funds who was networking at the TDA Conference recently in San Diego.

Going to the conference for the first time was an eye-opening experience for him. “I had no idea how competitive the industry really is,” said the CEO whose mutual fund assets come from smaller client accounts. “We just haven’t allocated much of a budget for growing our funds even though the performance is strong and our separate account business is profitable.”